Strategies for Integrating Stakeholders into Sustainability Innovation: A Configurational Perspective

Sustainability is a key driver of innovation for products, services, and business models. Sustainability innovations are aimed at improving the environmental, social, and economic performance of the innovated solution. Given the complexity of many sustainability challenges, leading innovators may seek to boost their innovation capacity by tapping into the ideas, knowledge, and expertise of their stakeholders. In doing so they need to consider how many and which stakeholders to integrate into new product development (NPD) processes, and at what stage. This study investigates stakeholder integration strategies associated with high sustainability performance of innovation. Building on the literatures of sustainability innovation and stakeholder integration in the context of NPD, this study developed a configurational model to analyze stakeholder integration strategies. The empirical data consisted of 80 interviews and documents from 13 medium to large companies and their stakeholders in Europe. Using the fsQCA method, it was found that there is not just one effective strategy but three stakeholder integration strategies for high sustainability performance of innovation. The results imply that deep organizational engagement with stakeholders is necessary for the achievement of high performance. Otherwise, the three strategies range from progressive openness, which allows stakeholders to exert a fundamental influence on the sustainability innovation, to limited openness toward stakeholder integration. With the early secondary strategy pointing to progressive openness, companies integrate secondary stakeholders early on and so maximize the influence of different views on the innovation. As to limited openness, companies following the selective strategy limit the number of stakeholder groups in NPD but are indifferent to the timing of these groups’ inputs. Finally, the fine‐tuning strategy is least open to atypical views as it restricts the share of secondary stakeholders and only allows external inputs after the fuzzy front end phase when key decisions regarding the innovation have been made.     

Strategic decision making in business relationships: A dyadic agent-based simulation approach

This study employs agent-based simulation to model strategic decision making in business relationships, examining the influence of two important strategy drivers in business relationships (performance and power) on relationship success (relationship survival and performance). The study offers insights into the complex and evolutionary interaction and feedback effects between networking strategy choice, relationship performance and power. Findings show that although certain strategies may be desirable for firms to manage their business relationships, they are not necessarily as successful in all situations. Results indicate that a trade-off exists between relationship context and performance which needs to be considered in strategic networking decisions. Further, the study shows that too many strategy changes cause relationships to become unstable and thus negatively affect performance. The authors refer to this phenomenon as strategy volatility — the rate at which actors change their networking strategies within relationships. This phenomenon arises when too many variables influence firms' decision making and thus cause firms to frequently change their strategy. Although strategy volatility has a relationship safeguarding effect in the short term, this effect diminishes over time.     

The sustainable growth model: A tool for evaluating the financial feasibility of market share strategies

Market share objectives constitute a key element of a firm's corporate strategy. Market share strategy decisions—to build, maintain, or harvest share—are generally based on a careful consideration of the long-term and short-term profitability and cash flow implications of such decisions. The product sales growth rate and capacity expansion implications of share building strategies, the sustainability of implied sales growth targets and its consistency with the established financial policies and objectives of the firm are the subject of this report. The sustainable growth model outlined provides a framework for evaluating the financial feasibility of sales growth objectives at the strategic business unit level and the firm level, from the standpoint of expected return on sales, investment requirements per dollar of sales, target capital structure and the dividend policy of the firm.     

Sustainability awareness in engineering curriculum through a proposed teaching and assessment framework

Engineers play a vital role in enabling the sustainable development of their societies. Thus, it is necessary to teach sustainability in universities, especially for engineering students, for a more sustainable future. The present work aims to measure and enhance engineering students’ awareness of sustainability by monitoring and evaluating learning and student outcomes during the last stages of an engineering curriculum and its culminating major design experience. A questionnaire to assess students’ awareness of sustainability and its tools is implemented. From this empirical study, obstacles to the awareness of sustainability through engineering education are discussed. The analysis of the results of the questionnaire implies the modification of the structure of senior projects and other capstone design courses in order to include a proposed teaching and assessment framework. This framework emphasizes students’ ability to understand and use effective sustainability tools, within the environment of their major design experience. The framework is composed of two paths. The first path concerns course design through which sustainability concepts and methods are included in several course elements. The second path addresses the assessment of the attainment of sustainability objectives by the students.

     

An engineering economy concept inventory

Abstract

There has been considerable recent emphasis on valid assessment of learning in engineering education. When new teaching pedagogies are introduced, it can be very challenging to demonstrate increases in learning of course concepts. While there are a number of accepted concept inventories available for some engineering topics (statics and dynamics, heat and energy, signals and systems, and statistics), reliable and valid tools for assessing learning are not readily available for many curriculum areas, including engineering economy. This paper discusses the reliability and validity of the Engineering Economy Concept Inventory (EECI) that can be used to assess learning in any introductory engineering economy course. Development of the EECI began in 2009 for use in assessing the effectiveness of model-eliciting activities in the classroom and has since been revised and reformulated a number of times. In the fall of 2018, the EECI was administered at multiple institutions for further evaluation of its validity and results from these groups of students are presented. The paper concludes with remarks regarding the reliability and validity of the instrument and recommendations for its use as a tool to assess knowledge in engineering economy.     

The Evolution of Industrial Relations in UK Nationalized Industries

This paper explores the development of industrial relations in the UK nationalized industries by examining strategy, structure and industrial relations decisions, and the political influences upon them. It is suggested that the distinctive features of nationalized industry industrial relations lies not so much in particular institutions as in the specific effects of business strategy and organization structure, along with the extent to which political factors influenced industrial relations directly. Three phases of industrial relations development are identified according to the extent and objectives of governmental involvement in the formulation of business strategies, structures and labour relations: the 1950s, the 1960s and 1970s, and the period beginning in 1979.     

The Relationships between Resource Configurations and Launch Strategies in Taiwan's IC Design Industry: An Exploratory Study

Within the last decade, the link between launch strategies and new product performance has been widely investigated. However, the relationship between resource configurations and launch strategies has received little attention. This study endeavors to fill that void by examining the relationships between resource configurations and launch strategy selections. In addition, this study investigates the moderating effects of market growth and competitiveness on the relationship between resources and launch strategies. Drawing on contingency theory and strategic studies, this study proposes that resource contingencies affect changes in launch strategies. This study also suggests that market characteristics play a contingent role in the relationships between the configurations of resources and launch strategy choices. Based on extensive studies reporting on market characteristics and their links to strategies, this study proposes that two market characteristics—market growth and competitiveness—are relevant for launch strategy decision making. Taiwan's integrated circuit (IC) design industry has been used as the analytical sample, as it has been identified as a promising sector for new product development. Based on the result of investigating 90 firms, four resource configurations are identified: (1) strategic and organizational abilities; (2) technological capabilities; (3) societal assets and goodwill; and (4) physical assets. Furthermore, two different launch strategies—innovative and product advantage and cost oriented—also are discovered. The results from a seemingly unrelated regression model reveal that technological capabilities and societal assets and goodwill contribute to the variation in the firms' choices of launch strategies. This study further conducted the simple slope analysis to observe the effect of the technological capabilities on the innovative and product advantage strategy under different levels of the market growth rate. The results interestingly showed that firms with technological capabilities demonstrated different degree of tendencies in employing this strategy in alignment with various market growth rates. The finding sheds some lights on the moderating role market characteristics play on the relationships between resource configurations and launch strategy selections. Academic implications and suggestions for practitioners also are provided.     

The study of technology as a field of knowledge in general education: historical insights and methodological considerations from a Swedish case study, 1842–2010

Today, technology education in Sweden is both a high-status and a low-status phenomenon. Positive values such as economic growth, global competitiveness and the sustainability of the welfare state are often coupled with higher engineering education and sometimes even upper secondary education. Negative values, on the other hand, are often associated with primary and lower secondary education in this subject. Within the realm of technology education at such lower levels of schooling in Sweden, different actors have often called for reformed curricula or better teacher training, owing to the allegedly poor state of technology education in schools. Recurring demands for a change in technology education are nothing unique from an historical point of view, however. In fact, the urge to influence teaching and learning in technology is much older than the school subject itself. The aim of this article is to describe and analyse some key patterns in technology education in Swedish elementary and compulsory schools from 1842 to 2010. This study thus deals with how technological content has developed over time in these school forms as well as how different actors in and outside the school have dealt with the broader societal view of what is considered as important knowledge in technology as well as what kind of technology has particular significance. The long period of investigation from 1842 to 2010 as well as a double focus on technology as scattered educational content and a subject called Technology make it possible to identify recurring patterns, which we have divided into three overarching themes: Technological literacy and the democratic potential of technological knowledge, The relationship between school technology and higher forms of technology education and The relationship between technology and science.     

Collective Bargaining and Faculty Job Satisfaction

Estimates of the impact of union membership on job satisfaction suffer from nonrandom self‐selection of employees into unions. In this paper, we circumvent this problem by examining the impact on satisfaction of collective bargaining representation, rather than of union membership. We use a two‐stage technique that controls for nonrandom selection of faculty into institutions, and apply that to a panel of faculty at repeatedly observed four‐year universities. We find that bargaining agreements increase satisfaction with compensation but reduce satisfaction with faculty workload. Bargaining has no statistically measurable impact on overall job satisfaction or on faculty's satisfaction with their authority to make decisions regarding their instructional duties.     

Knowing what engineering and technology teachers need to know: an analysis of pre-service teachers engineering design problems

With the rapid advances in civilization, technological breakthroughs, and a globally growing workforce, there is a strong need for engineers capable of working in the 21st century environment (Galloway, The 21st century engineer: A proposal for engineering education reform. ASCE, Washington DC 2008). To help increase the quality and quantity of students choosing to pursue engineering, leaders have called on K-12 education to look for methods of inserting pre-engineering into the K-12 curriculum. Leaders in technology education have responded to the call to develop top quality candidates for engineers by infusing engineering into the technology education curriculum. Teacher preparation programs have used various methods to provide future technology teachers with the required content knowledge in order to effectively teach engineering design within the technology curriculum. One such program uses an ABET accredited engineering curriculum for the content and additional training to strengthen engineering education pedagogy for technology teachers. Students who graduate from this program possess both an engineering degree and technology teaching license. The purpose of this investigation was to ascertain the differences between technology teachers from this program and traditionally trained technology teachers. In particular, how each group incorporates the engineering design process in classroom assignments. Design briefs were gathered from pre-service teachers who graduated from the aforementioned program and compared to design briefs of practicing technology teachers around the United States. The engineering design process was used to develop a rubric to compare the usage of engineering content between the two groups. It was found that students with 4 years of engineering training were more likely to use all steps of the engineering design process. Further examination illustrates that engineering trained technology teachers were significantly more likely to use mathematical and analytical methods to determine optimum solutions. In order for technology education teachers to effectively infuse engineering design into coursework, they need to be familiar and comfortable with the engineering sciences and the design process. With limited engineering design experience, technology teachers are not as likely to use optimization techniques involving mathematical and analytical reasoning. These concepts are critical for engineering students to be successful in college engineering programs and beyond.     

Examining sustainability performance in the supply chain: The case of the Greek dairy sector

This paper evaluates the sustainability performance of the Greek dairy chain and the performance of its individual members by using key indicators in relation to efficiency, flexibility, responsiveness and product quality. We assessed the importance of these indicators based on the relevant perceptions of key members of this chain. A structured questionnaire was developed where nineteen sustainability-related issues were examined. Two hundred and fifty three members of the Greek dairy supply chain responded including breeders, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and catering companies. Our findings illustrate the immediate need for improvement in many key sustainability performance indicators. They also show the critical role of large dairy manufacturers who are the “sustainability performance champions” in this chain and are the driving force for the implementation of many sustainability initiatives.     

Institutions,resources, and entry strategies in emerging economies

We investigate the impact of market‐supporting institutions on business strategies by analyzing the entry strategies of foreign investors entering emerging economies. We apply and advance the institution‐based view of strategy by integrating it with resource‐based considerations. In particular, we show how resource‐seeking strategies are pursued using different entry modes in different institutional contexts. Alternative modes of entry—greenfield, acquisition, and joint venture (JV)—allow firms to overcome different kinds of market inefficiencies related to both characteristics of the resources and to the institutional context. In a weaker institutional framework, JVs are used to access many resources, but in a stronger institutional framework, JVs become less important while acquisitions can play a more important role in accessing resources that are intangible and organizationally embedded. Combining survey and archival data from four emerging economies, India, Vietnam, South Africa, and Egypt, we provide empirical support for our hypotheses. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Problem-solving in technology education as an approach to education for sustainable development

This paper explores the issue of how students might learn about sustainability in technology––education classrooms and the relevance of problem-solving in that learning. One of the emerging issues in technology education research is the nature of problem-solving specified in curriculum documents and the kinds of learning activities undertaken by students in technology education classrooms. In parallel with our developing understanding of the characteristics of good technology education programs is the inclusion in recent curriculum documents of the concept of sustainability or sustainable development. However, as yet there is little information about how technology students think about sustainability and how they might best learn about it. This is of particular interest because in technology education, sustainability is often described in curriculum documents as an issue that is intended to be integrated within design projects and activities, rather than being the topic of a classroom lesson as might happen in a subject such as environmental studies. This paper explores current understanding of the issue generally and within technology education. It concludes that the design, problem-solving approach that is common to technology education classrooms provides many affordances to students engaging meaningfully with ideas of sustainability and of developing strong understandings of its scope and significance.     

A Budgeting Method Using Quality Function Deployment

One of the problems in budgetary planning is the lack of structure of the process. It is very hard to assess the impact of elementary decisions in the whole solution. Usually, people involved at political levels define the policies or strategies, but the implementation of such a policy or strategy is done at lower levels. Paradoxically, the budgetary requirements done by the experts suffer cuts at the political level without a clear understanding of the consequences. This paper introduces a method based on QFD to assess the impact of decisions made at the different levels, and presents a framework to support the incremental development of a budget that reduces the communication difficulties.     

Neo-corporatism and technological change in Australia: an international perspective

Industrialised nations have responded to the recent impact of new technology either by planning within a corporatist framework, or by reacting to changes determined by 'market forces'. Australia is moving from the second to the first strategy because of a combination of political and legal changes, building upon traditional institutions     

Two elementary schools’ developing potential for sustainability of engineering education

The Next Generation Science Standards present a way for engineering lessons to be formally integrated into elementary classrooms at a national level in the United States. Professional development programs are an important method for preparing teachers to enact the new engineering practices in their science classrooms. To better understand what contextual factors help a professional development program have a sustained effect on the implementation of engineering, we closely examined two elementary schools within the same school district that participated in the same professional development program but had very different outcomes in their lasting implementation of engineering. Using the case study method, we corroborate quantitative and qualitative sources of data measuring students’ learning and attitudes; teachers’ learning, attitudes, and implementation fidelity; perceived teacher community; and administrative support. Our analysis revealed that although the professional development program had district-level administrative support, there was considerable variation between schools in how teachers’ perceived school level support. In addition, teachers at the sustaining school collaborated and co-taught with one another. Our findings support previous literature on the role of administrative support and teacher learning communities. We discuss practical ways that professional development programs can seek to foster a context which is supportive of sustaining curriculum change for engineering.     

Launching new product features: a multiple case examination

The present study investigates the strategies that eight companies employed in launching new product features in a variety of markets. A literature review shows that launching new product features is an under‐researched area. This lack of attention may be detrimental to companies, as in many mature markets—such as those for durable consumer goods like television sets, coffee machines or videocassette recorders—the launch of new product features is perhaps the single most important product development activity that companies employ. We sought to address three research questions, namely what are the current strategies used by managers for launching new product features, how do these strategies differ, and what are the opportunities and pitfalls of these strategies? A multiple case study involving 38 managers from different functional backgrounds was used, thereby investigating the feature introductions of eight companies in‐depth. The study first identifies six feature launch decisions: the feature's position in the feature life cycle, the core technology concerned, the focus on feature or product, the differentiation practices used by the firm, feature diffusion in the product line, and the make‐or‐buy decision. Based on these decisions, four distinct feature launch strategies were distinguished: dictatorship, pioneering, establishing, and following. Dictatorship companies launch feature innovations that are based on fundamentally new technologies. Pioneers are not as powerful as dictators and focus on features that are based on applied and proven rather than on fundamentally new technologies. Establishes copy and improve successful features and launch them quickly and broadly as a standard in mass markets. Followers launch standard features that already existed in the mass market. These four strategies describe how the firms in our sample launched new features in the marketplace. As such, they describe when and where in the product line what feature was introduced. Such a typology of feature launch strategies helps to proactively understand the strategies firms have for launching new product features. The article discusses for each strategy the relevant feature launch decisions, possible applications, and opportunities and pitfalls. We conclude with the implications of our study for research and managerial practice.     

加入WTO后国有大型企业集团的价值链重构

本文深入分析了我国加入WTO后跨国公司的战略转变对国有大型企业集团的冲击，并将这种冲击在价值链的层面进行展开。围绕国有大型企业集团全球化的问题，我们以国有大型企业集团的现状和跨国公司的中国区战略为基点，提出了“三步走”的价值链调整战略，实现“一强二大三全球化”。     

Angel investors’ selection criteria: A comparative institutional perspective

Despite the important role of angel investors as critical financial providers for new ventures, little is known regarding how the institutions present in very different institutional environments impact their investment decisions. While angel investors might be expected to make decisions based on similar selection criteria, they are also embedded within and affected by different institutional settings in which they invest, and as a result they give these criteria weight that are different from those of other investors. We compare angel investors’ selection criteria in China and Denmark utilizing a comparative institutional perspective. Utilizing a policy-capturing approach to understanding their decision criteria, we find that angel investors in China, embedded within relationship-based institutions, tend to rely more on strong ties such as family and friends in the management team. They also give risks less weight as compared with angel investors in Denmark, which operate within more rule-based institutional contexts. As with venture capitalists, angel investors modify their decision criteria to fit the local institutional conditions.     

供应商技术研发决策行为的演化博弈分析——基于技术外部性的视角

供应商在面向多制造商时研发共性技术还是研发专用技术？以此问题为基点,本文运用演化博弈论,在共性技术外部性、外部性引发价格战及政府干预治理情形下对供应商技术研发决策行为进行分析。研究发现：共性技术外部性的存在使得博弈演化稳定于由选择不同技术研发策略的供应商共存的均衡;在外部性引发价格战情形下,当外部性较强时,零部件降价幅度越大,供应商越倾向于选择研发专用技术,反之,当外部性较弱时供应商越倾向于选择研发共性技术;当考虑外部干预治理时,政府价格干预效果依该行为所引致的市场额外需求降低状况,而政府补偿干预有效引导着供应商选择共性技术研发策略。